Page 47 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Corvin

We’re all sitting around the dinner table that we rarely even notice is still a fixture in the dining room. The dim light from the chandelier overhead buzzes. Asher’s leg beside me bounces nervously, and I drop my hand to it, giving him a slight smirk.

“You saw me in my aunt’s house? And she was… using magic on me,” Silver recounts, as Jasper stares at her intently.

“Yes.”

“I mean, we knew someone was using magic on her. Who else would, other than Soliel? It makes sense,” I add.

Lowell sits at the head of the table, Silver on his lap.

He looks very much the regal part for once, instead of looking like one of us who doesn’t belong.

Silver’s bringing him back into the fold, back to reality.

“Yes, but how much of her memories were messed with?” Lowell mutters. “Magic has a cost, and it can also leave scars. How the fuck do we undo centuries of glamour work from her mind?”

He has a point. Magic can leave deep scars in the psyche that aren’t reversible.

Unless…

“When she turns, if she triggers her gene, she should be cleared of any magic in her system. Her entire being goes through a transformation, becoming something entirely new. It should wipe the haze from her mind,” I tell them.

“She’s not triggering her fucking gene! Aurelias will know the second she feeds,” Lowell snarls, his hand coming down on the table in a loud thud.

Now Asher gives my thigh a steadying squeeze.

“It’s the only suggestion I have now,” I whisper.

That has Jasper looking worried, his red eyes catching mine for a split second.

“Did you ever get our blood fully analyzed?” Silver tries her best to break the tension in the room, but her question will only add more when I tell them what I found.

“Yes.”

“Elaborate. I don’t have time for fucking games,” Lowell says, his tone leaving no room for bullshit.

I sigh. “There was a mix of street drugs, but there was…” I close my eyes, swallowing.

Lowell is going to lose his shit, and I’m not ready.

Asher’s hand tightens on my leg.

“Corvin, so help me?—”

“Blood. There were traces of blood in the mixture. It was so minute and tough to detect inside your blood samples. However, there was DNA that belonged to none of us in the sampling.”

Lowell sits forward, his eyes turning deadly.

Like I thought, he’ll do anything to protect Silver, even kill.

“What does that mean?” asks Jasper.

“It means that someone tried to trigger her fucking curse.” Lowell’s arm tightens around Silver, and she instinctively wiggles back into his body for protection.

“Someone tried to force me to feed?”

I nod at her.

“You have the DNA profile from the samples?” Asher asks.

“I’m working on it. I had extrapolated enough from all of us to make a full profile, but I’m still running it through all my systems to see if it’s anyone I’ve had in my lab before.

If not, I can hack into some human systems and piggyback off their data to see if whoever’s blood was used to dose Silver is in their system. ”

This has Lowell sitting back, but his hold on Silver doesn’t ease.

I hate that we went from what happened in the living room to what happened in the dungeon to here.

I’d rather be laid out on a makeshift bed on the floor with all of us wrapped up in bliss.

But this curse and whoever is fucking with us is determined to keep sticking their fingers into every happiness we might get our hands on.

“Who the hell would even know I have a gene to trigger?” Silver interjects. “Soliel was supposed to be the only one who knew. Someone had to know about me and know enough about your curse to do what they did.”

I sit back, rubbing my temples, as all the possibilities move through my brain like a code inside a computer, making me dizzy.

Asher senses my distress as if it were his own and intertwines my hand with his, giving each of us something to ground us.

“Who the fuck knows at this point? It’s going to come together in the end, but I damn well hope it’s not too late when it does,” Lowell says, standing.

Silver tucks under his arm, looking up at him, a little glassy-eyed from our earlier activities.

“We need more information from that box. We need to go through the damn thing once and for all,” Asher says, and Silver stiffens. “I know you wanted to do this your way and in your own time, but it seems we don’t have time for that, sweet girl.”

That has her relaxing, and vile thoughts of Silver sucking my cock while Asher’s fingers fucked my ass, dancing in my gray matter. That was the last time he called her that. And it’s been etched into my brain ever since.

“We do it together?” she asks, her gaze darting between the four of us.

“Tomorrow,” Lowell adds. “You need to eat and take your vitamins, and we need sleep.”

Silver bites her bottom lip, and Lowell cups her chin.

The way he looks at her is something I never thought I’d see. He’s falling for her, whether or not she knows it.

Fuck, he might’ve already fallen.

“Do I have to keep taking the vitamins? I’m like all of you, aren’t I?”

Once the first fang sunk into her vein, I put her on a strict regimen of vitamin B12, B9, vitamin C, and Iron. The combination boosts her red blood cell count and blood production, which is crucial if we’re going to continue to feed from her.

“No. You’re not like us. Not yet.” Lowell adds the last part with a touch of sadness in his tone, as if he doesn’t think he’ll ever see that side of Silver as he longs to.

“Come, little lamb. We’ll get you some food. Then, it’s off to bed with you. You’ve been a very naughty little thing lately; you need your sleep.” Lowell smacks her ass, and she squeaks, following him into the kitchen.

Jasper sighs and drops his head into his hands. “What a fucking mess.”

“We’ll get through it. We always do.”

He looks up at me, a speck of something unsaid in his eyes, and he leaves it that way as he gets up from the table and heads toward his study.

“I’m going to go to the dungeon and clean up. I’ll see you in bed?” Asher whispers in my ear.

I turn into his warmth, kissing his lips briefly. “You will. I’m exhausted. The machines shouldn’t be done until morning, anyhow.”

“Good.” He kisses my nose. “I sleep better beside you.”

I’m still giddy from his words when I glimpse something moving beyond the French doors to the right of the table.

There’s a glare from the light above me, but I home in on something white. The barest hint of a flash, moving amongst the trees like a wisp, has me up and outside before the human eye could blink.

That’s when I smell it.

Valentina.

Without thinking, I take off after the perfume.

Jasper had been right.

She’s stalking us.

She’s been watching this entire time.

“Good morning,” Asher groans, stretching beside me.

I gasp, sitting up and taking in my surroundings.

What the fuck?!

The last thing I recall is chasing what I thought to be Valentina through the woods. I don’t remember coming home or getting into bed.

“How did I get here?”

“Shh, you’re going to wake Silver.”

Turning, I scan my eyes over Silver, cuddled up to my side, facing me.

“Asher,” I whisper. “How did I get here? When did I come in?”

“What the hell do you mean? You came to bed late from the lab, and nothing was out of the norm. Why? What is the matter with you?”

“Outside. Now.”

Crawling from beneath the covers, I try my best not to wake Silver.

I make it into the hall, hyperventilating, before Asher joins me. He’s in nothing but form-fitting boxers, and the swell of his morning dick behind them does nothing for my brain fog.

“Shut the door.”

Concern fills his face as he listens and does so. “Corvin, what is going on?”

“Last night, when all of you left the dining room, I saw Valentina. At least, I thought I did. I chased her through the woods, following her scent.”

“Shit. That’s what Jasper said, too, that he could smell her.”

“The thing is, I remember nothing past following her. Not getting back home. Not getting in bed. I was never in the lab that I know of…” Shit, the lab!

Rushing through the house, leaving Asher behind, I barrel into my lab, checking all the machines and samples, using my vampiric speed that Lowell rarely loves us to use in the manor, since shit gets broken too often when we do.

“What is happening with you this morning?” Asher asks again, lazily leaning against the door and looking like a Greek fucking god, his blond-streaked hair falling over his forehead.

“I already told you! Someone wiped my memories from last night.”

“How is that possible? We’re supernatural creatures. Nothing can take our memories or control us. We control them.”

“I don’t know how it’s possible, but I’m telling you, Ash, I don’t remember a thing.”

“Alright, slow down. Use logic. We have a lot going on. Maybe it all hit you at once.”

I shoot him a look of disbelief. “Don’t placate me.”

“I’m not!” He lifts his hands in defense. “I’m just trying to figure this out like you.”

“I need to draw blood,” I say more to myself than to Asher, rummaging around in my cart for a butterfly needle and syringe. I’ll need to test my blood for any kind of psychedelic drug or substance.

“When you’re done spiraling, and this makes more sense, come find me. I’m going back to bed. Our girl’s getting cold.”

That sentence would usually be enough to break me out of a spiral, but not today. Today, I think I got a bit too close to whatever’s been happening around here, and now I’m wondering how long it’s been happening.

Has someone been fucking with us all these years and then wiping our memories?

Or is awakened now that the curse is close to breaking? Some kind of fail-safe?

I get my blood drawn, and the mess cleaned up, and once it’s running in the blood chemistry analyzer, I sigh in relief that I’ve tried to figure out the missing time in my memory.

And then I head to Jasper’s room.

He’s on top of his covers, asleep in his boxers with one hand down the front of them.

It’s odd to see him so vulnerable. He typically wears a tight mask of indifference.

“Jasper.” I shake him.

He wakes like a wild beast, pulling his arm from his waistband and swinging it around as he comes to violently. “What happened?”

“We need to talk.”